Anyone having success with digital negs out of a Canon Pro series printer?

[David Brown]

I am interested in making digital negs, and I am willing to invest the time and money into software, but I just switched from Epson to a Canon printer, and do not wish to go back. I have read (here and elsewhere) that Canon printers can work, so I am seeking anecdotal evidence, as it were.

 

[Ian Leake]

I have a Canon ImagePROGRAF Pro-1000. It is a superb inkjet printer with far higher build quality than the awful Epsons. Unfortunately I've really struggled to get a suitable digital negative from it. Obviously QTR doesn't work for Canons, so you have to use one of the PDN variants. I've had two problems: (1) most colour ink combinations have insufficient UV density for my needs; and (2) the photo black is a super UV blocker, and when it gets added to colours it throws everything off. I tried two negatives in registration, which works but isn't ideal. In the end I settled for making an inkjet positive, and contact printing that to film to make a positive. If anyone has had more success than me then I'd love to hear about it.

 

[KenS]

I am interested in making digital negs, and I am willing to invest the time and money into software, but I just switched from Epson to a Canon printer, and do not wish to go back. I have read (here and elsewhere) that Canon printers can work, so I am seeking anecdotal evidence, as it were.

David,
i have been an Epson V850 pro for couple of years and print my SLIGHTLY enlarged 'alt process print' negs onto Pictorico 'film with an 'el Cheapo' (ie $75.00 Canuckian) Cannon printer... I am not unhappy with the results

Ken

 

[Patrick Robert James]

I make digital negs with a Canon Pro 10 and they work fine. I came up with a new way to do it for myself, but the way most people do it works fine too. I've only done cyanotypes so far. I planned on doing some other proceses too, but, life. They work great for cyanotypes though.

As an aside, I think Canon could probably sell a ton of printers if they just put "not an Epson!" in their ads. I won't buy an Epson. I've even turned down free ones.

To give you an idea, this is a print that is only 4" on the long side.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I have a Canon Pro 100 and I’m able to make negs for cyanotypes, Ziatypes and Kalitypes. The dye based inks make it harder because I think it doesn’t block uv as well. I had to get the exposure time just right. I can get muddy highlights pretty fast if I over expose the print slightly. Epson printers use pigment based ink that are better suited for digital negs.

 

[Fraunhofer]

I have a Pro 100 and can make decent digital negatives for gum and pd/pt. For Ziatype I was unable to get sufficient UV blocking. My negatives are olive green, but hey they work.

I found the maximum blocking color and then used that for a test print and then linearized the resulting curve. I did this with Linux tools without PS or such things, it was fiddly and I walked down a few dead ends, but I sorted it out eventually. I had no prior experience with DNGs but am generally competent with programming, graphs etc.

Hope that helps.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Here’s an excellent book on making digital negs. Great website with free downloads which includes curves for various alt processes.
https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Digital...t=&hvlocphy=9032430&hvtargid=pla-453859573162

 

[osella]

I have had some success from a canon pro 1000. My curves could use some work but you can certainly make a useable negative. Here is a platinum-palladium print I made recently.

 

[Bob Carnie]

David I have used Epson for digital negs... I have a Canon but never set it up for this .. if it aint broke why fix

But if you want to go down this worm hole then I suggest you first contact Richard Boutwell who designs software program for making CALIBRATED digital negs for all the alt process. He is in Philly and is quite familiar with wet process and is a digital wiz kid.
Richard will be able to walk you through the pros and cons of different printers and how they work with his system..
Start there, because if you do not have good CALIBRATION you are just pissing in the wind.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I have had some success from a canon pro 1000. My curves could use some work but you can certainly make a useable negative. Here is a platinum-palladium print I made recently.

Great job! I’m having problems in printing highlights. I used a Canon Pro 100. My highlights won’t clear with Ziatypes. Is your Neg printed with black or colored ink. I’m trying to find a color that blocks uv.

 

[Ian Leake]

I have had some success from a canon pro 1000. My curves could use some work but you can certainly make a useable negative. Here is a platinum-palladium print I made recently.

Nice print. Would you be willing to share your printer settings? And may I ask what’s your sensitiser recipe?

 

[osella]

Thank you! I don’t remember the exact print settings off the top of my head, but I’ll post them when I’m back home. This negative was printed with black ink, but I have used colored ink for some cyanotypes.

The sensitizer solution in drops was 12 pt,12 pd,24 fo. I did not use any contrast agent. The exposure was 5 minutes. I use sodium citrate as my developer.

 

[Ian Leake]

Thank you! I don’t remember the exact print settings off the top of my head, but I’ll post them when I’m back home. This negative was printed with black ink, but I have used colored ink for some cyanotypes.

The sensitizer solution in drops was 12 pt,12 pd,24 fo. I did not use any contrast agent. The exposure was 5 minutes. I use sodium citrate as my developer.

Thanks

 

[osella]

I finally found time to check my print settings. I use Highest Density Fine Art as my media setting and under the color/intensity manual adjustment I adjusted the brightness setting down to its darkest value.

In my testing this gave the most visual density(I don’t have a densiometer) to my eye. This is true for both black and colored negatives.

Using black ink only has seemed to give me more linear response than using colored negatives. There was a steep cutoff for the highlights which required a more extreme correction curve.

I am using a light source that peaks at 420nm so results may be different depending on what you are using. I started with a UV source with peak at 365nm but ended up with excessive printing times as the Pictorico OHP blocks a significant portion of its output.

 

[Ian Leake]

I finally found time to check my print settings. I use Highest Density Fine Art as my media setting and under the color/intensity manual adjustment I adjusted the brightness setting down to its darkest value.

In my testing this gave the most visual density(I don’t have a densiometer) to my eye. This is true for both black and colored negatives.

Using black ink only has seemed to give me more linear response than using colored negatives. There was a steep cutoff for the highlights which required a more extreme correction curve.

I am using a light source that peaks at 420nm so results may be different depending on what you are using. I started with a UV source with peak at 365nm but ended up with excessive printing times as the Pictorico OHP blocks a significant portion of its output.

Thanks, I appreciate this. Looking into my crystal ball, I predict I’ll soon be spending some more time with my Canon

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I have a Canon ImagePROGRAF Pro-1000. It is a superb inkjet printer with far higher build quality than the awful Epsons. Unfortunately I've really struggled to get a suitable digital negative from it. Obviously QTR doesn't work for Canons, so you have to use one of the PDN variants. I've had two problems: (1) most colour ink combinations have insufficient UV density for my needs; and (2) the photo black is a super UV blocker, and when it gets added to colours it throws everything off. I tried two negatives in registration, which works but isn't ideal. In the end I settled for making an inkjet positive, and contact printing that to film to make a positive. If anyone has had more success than me then I'd love to hear about it.

I have the pro-1000 and use it to make digital negatives for contact printing onto black and white paper. Not sure how well it would work for other alt processes, but can very easily replicate what you see on the screen to what you get in a print, which is super useful for making silver gelatin prints from digital sources as well as scanning film in and collaboratively editing it with someone digitally to make a larger print. Having that digital intermediate can be very useful.

 

[David Brown]

I have the pro-1000 and use it to make digital negatives for contact printing onto black and white paper. Not sure how well it would work for other alt processes, but can very easily replicate what you see on the screen to what you get in a print, which is super useful for making silver gelatin prints from digital sources as well as scanning film in and collaboratively editing it with someone digitally to make a larger print. Having that digital intermediate can be very useful.

This is what I am after: i.e., making silver gelatin prints.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

This is what I am after: i.e., making silver gelatin prints.

That is very straightforward.

A good starting place is to get an image looking the way you want on screen as a 16 bit RGB TIFF file in the ProPhoto color space in Photoshop. The image itself can be color or black and white, as long as the file is RGB and ProPhoto. From there crop and resize it to your desired print size at 600 dpi. Apply any sharpening you want. Flip the image horizontally. Add a levels layer. In the levels layer, map 0 to 240, and 255 to 16 for the master RGB panel. This results in a negative image that will contact print on a grade 3 with Ilford MGIV paper and pretty much use the entire density of the bw paper once you get your exposure time worked out.

I usually print onto much larger paper for the negative than what the bw print itself will be and always add at least 1/2 inch of pure black around the edge so you can make a pure white border if you want.

Once you’re ready, in photoshop go to file->automate->canon print studio pro. From there, select your paper size, don’t resize image to fit paper, select paper type, then under color management, select black and white print. Print it out. You now have a digital negative that you can contact print with. Work out your exposure time just like you would any other negative.

You can use clear material, though I prefer to use glossy or luster paper with no backprinting, simply because the Pro-1000 has a built in reflective densitometer and you can tell the printer to calibrate itself to a given paper, again super useful, and let’s you work in a generic RGB color managed color space.

From here, you can adjust your negative density via the levels layer, keeping it centered on 128 to fit your needs, though I’d leave at least 16 levels on each end of the range as buffer.

Now is this a “technically correct” way of doing it? Probably not. However it is very straightforward, about as simple as it gets, and gives shockingly good results, which is what matters. Basically, it’s about 10% of the effort and 90% of the image quality of other more advanced/involved ways of doing it. If you want that last 10%, then you can certainly go there, but it’s a lot more effort.

 

[Lachlan Young]

That is very straightforward.

A good starting place is to get an image looking the way you want on screen as a 16 bit RGB TIFF file in the ProPhoto color space in Photoshop. The image itself can be color or black and white, as long as the file is RGB and ProPhoto. From there crop and resize it to your desired print size at 600 dpi. Apply any sharpening you want. Flip the image horizontally. Add a levels layer. In the levels layer, map 0 to 240, and 255 to 16 for the master RGB panel. This results in a negative image that will contact print on a grade 3 with Ilford MGIV paper and pretty much use the entire density of the bw paper once you get your exposure time worked out.

I usually print onto much larger paper for the negative than what the bw print itself will be and always add at least 1/2 inch of pure black around the edge so you can make a pure white border if you want.

Once you’re ready, in photoshop go to file->automate->canon print studio pro. From there, select your paper size, don’t resize image to fit paper, select paper type, then under color management, select black and white print. Print it out. You now have a digital negative that you can contact print with. Work out your exposure time just like you would any other negative.

You can use clear material, though I prefer to use glossy or luster paper with no backprinting, simply because the Pro-1000 has a built in reflective densitometer and you can tell the printer to calibrate itself to a given paper, again super useful, and let’s you work in a generic RGB color managed color space.

From here, you can adjust your negative density via the levels layer, keeping it centered on 128 to fit your needs, though I’d leave at least 16 levels on each end of the range as buffer.

Now is this a “technically correct” way of doing it? Probably not. However it is very straightforward, about as simple as it gets, and gives shockingly good results, which is what matters. Basically, it’s about 10% of the effort and 90% of the image quality of other more advanced/involved ways of doing it. If you want that last 10%, then you can certainly go there, but it’s a lot more effort.

Major warning for the unwary: ProPhoto RGB is a gamma 1.8 space, unlike sRGB or Adobe RGB which are 2.2. This is a well known source of issues with using grayscale/ BW print modes on inkjets.

I'd also strongly advise against using 'paper' based negatives unless you want to get into a potential mess involving the paper texture intruding.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Major warning for the unwary: ProPhoto RGB is a gamma 1.8 space, unlike sRGB or Adobe RGB which are 2.2. This is a well known source of issues with using grayscale/ BW print modes on inkjets.

I'd also strongly advise against using 'paper' based negatives unless you want to get into a potential mess involving the paper texture intruding.

Oh? Like what kind of issues? On what printers? Using what software?

Not looking to get into an argument here, but at least with Canon’s latest Pro (1000,2000,4000) printers, as long as you are within an ICC colorspace, and you use Canon’s printing software, the gamma of the colorspace is automatically corrected for and not a cause for concern, at least in my experience, and I’ve made a ridiculous number of prints.

Re: paper negatives: this is purely just my personal preference because it makes it easy to get reproducible results with my printer, though, all that being said, the only time I go the digital negative route is if the client wants a silver gelatin print for “archival” purposes, otherwise, I just do a standard inkjet black and white print, which Canon’s latest Pro level printers do an excellent job with.

 

[calebarchie]

Major warning for the unwary: ProPhoto RGB is a gamma 1.8 space, unlike sRGB or Adobe RGB which are 2.2. This is a well known source of issues with using grayscale/ BW print modes on inkjets.

I'd also strongly advise against using 'paper' based negatives unless you want to get into a potential mess involving the paper texture intruding.

Hi,

Have you actually made digital negs for silver gelatin work? I find paper base superior.

 

[Bob Carnie]

Hi,

Have you actually made digital negs for silver gelatin work? I find paper base superior.

I make inkjet digital negative and silver gelatin digital negatives on ortho film.. In both cases I find excellent resuts.

I am a bit confused.. when you say paper negative are you suggesting that the ink is laid down on the paper surface and with that PRINT you make a contact through the print to silver paper receiving the image. I would imagine these prints would
be very soft , but since I have never done one I am curious to learn about this.

 

[calebarchie]

I make inkjet digital negative and silver gelatin digital negatives on ortho film.. In both cases I find excellent resuts.

I am a bit confused.. when you say paper negative are you suggesting that the ink is laid down on the paper surface and with that PRINT you make a contact through the print to silver paper receiving the image. I would imagine these prints would
be very soft , but since I have never done one I am curious to learn about this.

I suspect Lachlan does not have much experience with digital negs and silver gelatin otherwise he would be aware of the issues of using clear media. The prints are not soft as the ink side is in contact with the paper, however the dot pattern is diffused and no longer visible. The advantages of this is with the correct coated media you can lay much more ink without pooling and those other problems associated with an acetate. You need to do a lost of testing to find the best paper without markings on the back and without course fibre texture, I have found Red River paper to be great for this. It is definitely worth experimenting with this for sure.

To clarify; making a digital negative as you would normally, but on glossy inkjet paper rather than pictorico, not printing on the silver gelatin paper itself. This only works for silver-based and not uv process.

 

[Bob Carnie]

I would be interested in doing a test if you are up for it... I would send you a image for your method, you make a paper neg and send back to me I will make from the same file two negs one silver and one inkjet and I would make two sets of three prints on glossy silver paper, one set for you and one set for me.. I would be very interested in the resulting prints.

 

[nmp]

I suspect Lachlan does not have much experience with digital negs and silver gelatin otherwise he would be aware of the issues of using clear media. The prints are not soft as the ink side is in contact with the paper, however the dot pattern is diffused and no longer visible. The advantages of this is with the correct coated media you can lay much more ink without pooling and those other problems associated with an acetate. You need to do a lost of testing to find the best paper without markings on the back and without course fibre texture, I have found Red River paper to be great for this. It is definitely worth experimenting with this for sure.

To clarify; making a digital negative as you would normally, but on glossy inkjet paper rather than pictorico, not printing on the silver gelatin paper itself. This only works for silver-based and not uv process.

Apparently Costco Kirkland glossy media works very well for this purpose - or so I have read.